Kids Story with the Market

Mike and Nik with the Stock Market

June 2006

Nik asked me about stock market topic they have in school. I told her to invest long term in companies that they use in everyday life.

Telling kids sometimes do not register much, so I have to put my words into Actions.

I started both of them with an Ameritrade account in which Nik bought shares of Apple - AAPL at $25 and Facebook - FB at $78 . Mike bought also Apple and Nvidia -NVDA at $11.60 for his account.

May 2016 Mike went to San Francisco to attend her schoolmate - Kat’s birthday party at that time she is working in a start up company called Five9 -an Artificial Intelligence Customer Contact Center. He learned that the company stocks will be offered to the market.

He bought shares of Five9 - FIVN at $10.30 a share on the day of stock offering.

In 2019 - He mentioned to me about Five9 and I bought at $31.50 a share

May 2017

Mike bought Shopify -SHOP at $91.00 and explained to me what Shopify Stores does in

E-commerce business with Amazon. Then, I bought shares too.

January 2020

I bought NIO , a Chinese electric vehicle company like Tesla.

The market for electric vehicle with the China population is four times than USA.

I bought 1000 shares at $3.65 taking a risk.

After 2 months, the company reported going for bankruptcy and the stock went down 30% loss. I told my daughter Nik, of all people, to buy some shares of NIO - imagine that time - telling your daughter to invest in a company going into bankruptcy.

She bought shares at $2.42

OMG - What if NIO completely shut down. How can she believes on my next stock buy.

After 2 months, news came out that the Chinese government bailouts and invested 1 Billion Dollars into the company. I added more shares after the news. It paid off taking the risk of not selling with CNBC news of bankruptcy.

“Give a man a fish, and he will be hungry again tomorrow;

Teach him to catch a fish, and he will be richer all his life.”

Also, Outcome could have been like this.

All stocks mentioned are still on hold with Long Term Strategy

Kids’ Stocks with Price and Gain % as of October 1, 2025

As of October, 2025 - Stocks current price and Gain Percent

Nik Returns:

NVDA - at $179 ( 1698 %)

AAPL - at $249 ( 870 % )

FB now META - at $727 ( 814 % )

NIO - at $7 ( 181 % )

Mike Returns:

SHOP - at $156 ( 1616 % )

NVDA - at $179 ( 1447 %)

AAPL - at $249 ( 907 % )

FIVN - sold with gain

Thanks for reading.